THE CONNEMARA COLONISTS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 411, 25 February 1881, Page 17

THE CONNEMARA COLONISTS.

f A LETTBB FROM BISHOP IRELAND Bishop Irbland'B letter printed below on the subject of the Connemara Colonists, whose condition has provoked considerable comment of late will be read with interest. The communication is addressed to the Pioneer Press of St. Paul, Minn., and is as follows :—: — Bo much has been said of the Connemara colonists in Big Stone County that I beg leave to say a few words affecting my relations with these colonists. The conclusion has no doubt forced itself upon the minds of your readers that whatever they may think of the reports sent abroad through the country asserting great destitution to exist in the Connemara settlement, these people are at best an improvident <md worthless class of citizens, and it is, perhaps, asked how I was induced to bring such people to the State. The families that came to us were not the class we had bargained for. Both Father Nugent, who defrayed their expenses to Boston, and myself, who had the responsibility of taking them from the sea shore, had supposed that we would have as objects of our beneficence industrious, sober, haidworking people, who, though impoverished by the famine in Ireland,

were still of a mould to make their way successfully in the world , if only the opportunity were given to them. The parties in the West of Ireland whom Father Nugent requested to select, families for the colony, seat us, for the most part, paupers, of long standing, totally demoralised and uuaanned by years of suff sring, and unaccustomed to provide for their own. wants. Xo one was nure disappointed than I when, after some weeks of painful experience with my proteges, the truth dawn upon me that I hid a mountain, of trouble before me, when I had expected a mere mole hill. I had for the last four .rears been instrumental in bringing Irish colonists to the State, and had noticad their pride of character, their anxiety to work and to be independent, their rapid success amid great difficulties. I had presumed that no families could come to me from. Ireland devoid of all these noble qualities. Still, I did not allow myself to ba discouraged. I avow I sincerely loved the new colonists. They were Irishmen, and if they were demoralised and improvident, their defect? wars no faults of the race, but the unfortunate fruits of oppressioa aa.l suffering. Driven by dire necessity, as the Connemara people hail b^en, into the wild mountains of Galway, where the earth wa3 sterile, where industry was unknown, they could not but be what I found them, and, indeed, when I read their sad story I only wonder that they are not a thousand times worse. Then, too, I had, as I yet have, sufficient faith in the Irish race to believe that, with due discipline, the worst specimens can be easily fashioned into noblest manhood. My plan in dealing with the Connemara settlers — Father Ryan. of Graceville carrying out exactly my regulations — was to supply them for the winter with the necessaries ot life, and make them provide themselves whatever else they might des>re. The ultimate object of all my actions towards them was to make them work and become self-supporting. They have since their arrival shown an. unwillingness to work. During the busy harvest season many of them loitered around the prairies, and all this under the avowed pretext that| Bishop Ireland would support them, whether they worked or not. Some of them have even gone so far as to invite their children home from St. Paul, where they have been, earning high wages, telling them that living was free in Big Stone County. It "would have been folly, under these circumstances, to do more for them than I did. Bach family was furnished with a warm, shanty, a cow, wood, potatoes and corn meal. Having read all the reports that have come down from Morris and Graceville, and having taken information from other sources, I am at this moment satisfied that these settlers have not been destitute of the above-mentioned necessaries. There may have been a scarcity of wood in the early part of the season, when, owing to the sudden and unexpected blockading of the road by snow it was impossible for the richest settler to have an abundance of firewood. Mr. Hutchins tells of " small quantities" of firewood at each shanty. The wood was there ; it did not matter that the quantity at some shanties was small, as I had two teams constantly circulating over the prairie and dropping more or less wood &t every door. Indeed, there has been a strong feeling aroused in Graceville against the railroad and myself, because when old and well-to-do settlers could not receive from the railroad all the wood they desired, carloads would be sure to arrive regularly for the Connemaras. Then the pile may often have been larger than what Mr. Hutchins saw — sorry lam to say that our Oonnemaras are artful in begging. At a shanty, where once the owner had claimed that he had no wood, a neighbour, Mr Mcßreddy, afterwards accidently stumbled upon a half-cord covered with snow ; and at another, where only one piece was visible, the Morris investigators, as Mr. Hodges admitted before the Chamber of Commerce, after a slight search, found several sticks hidden away in the garret. There was meal found in every shanty, so much of it, indeed, In some shanties that the good women were feeding it to the cows. And if the potatoes were frozen it was the fault of the people themselves. A part of the potatoes which I sent to Graceville were frozen in the cars. The sound ones only were delivered to the Connemaras, who let them freeze after they had received them. I was all the time well aware of the supplies at the disposal of the settlers, aud I was aware, too, of the large sums of money being sent to them by their children, with which they were making parchases at the stores. lam not afraid to say that the boys and girls, some ninety of them, who have been working in St. Paul and elsewhere in Minnesota, have sent home to their parents in Big Stone county from 1.500d015. to 2,000d015. The appearance of misery in the shanties, the complaints of the inmates, could not alarm me, as I mow well the habits of the people. With all these facts fixed in my mind, I claim to-day that I was fully justified in denying, through the St. Paul and Chicago papers, the statements made to the public by Mr. Hutchins and his friends. I do not, however, accuse Mr. Hutchins and the Board of Trade of Morris, of wilful misrepresentations. They have been, in a great measure, imposed upon by the tricks and falsehoods of the Connemara people. I will allude but to one delicate lie told by these people — as it is one that I myself know about. It was said that Father Ryan, one day, tore up an order for meal. I gave the order, telling the man he should work out the value of the meal, at the rate of one dollar per day. At the store he found that meal would in a few days be cheaper, and he refused to take the meal on the day that the order had been given. The order was then torn up by Father Ryan, who considered it of no further use. However, Ido blame Mr. Hutchins and his friends for not pushing thei r investigations beyond mere appearances — for not giving a hearing to the other side. It looks as if they were in a hurry to make out a case, and desired only a one-sided report. Some months ago I had cautioned, through Mr Munroe, the people of Morris against the impositions which the colonists would be likely to practice upon them. I blame them, too, for not quietly telling me of the supposed need of provisions, without sending the news to the four corners of the earth, to the great detriment of the whole State of Minnesota. They surely had ao reason to fancy that I would not be most anxious to relieve all suffering. Here again it looks as if only loud charity sirits Mr Hutchins, or aa

if he had something else in view besides mere charity. And it does take considerable engineering in my mind that I may bring myself to believe that Mr Hutchiss and the Morris Board of Trade tried to be entirely just and impartial when G-raceville is blamed for the freezing of young Malone. who ■was frozen within a few miles of Morris before he had ever seen Graceville, and for whose cure in Morris a Morris hotel-keeper and a Morris doctor charged me 23d015. I make no issue, I must here say, a°ainst the people of Morris in general, many of whom, I am assured, understand well the situation. I am speaking only of Mr. Hutchins and his friends. The public will, I trust, give me credit for desiring to have, at the very first outburst of alarm a true knowledge of the facts. T wished no whitewashing I appointed at once two gentlemen to investigate matters — Mr. O'Brien and Mr Hodges — the one to control the report of the other, both seeing things together, assisting one another with mutual observations and explanations I regret to say, that I have not yet received Mr. Hodges' report. A dispatch to the Pioneer Press and a discourse before the Bt. Paul Chamber of Commerce — Mr. Hodges having gone to Big Stone at the request of neither the Pioneer Press nor of the Chamber — I cannot consider as the report which I had reason to expect from him. But I am perfectly satisfied of the truthfulness in every particular of the letter of Mr. O'Brien, and of the report of the Graceville committee organised at his suggestion. No uneasiness is to be felt as to the future wants of these families. I will provide for them, even doing in the future more than my judgent will allow me, but compelled to do so to avoid outcries and investigations. The management of these people will be henceforward a difficult task, as they a?e now convinced that all they have to do to force me into their views will he to send word to their good friend, Col. Dunlap, to their other friend, Mr. Hutchins of Morris, when investigating committees and car-loads of provisions will be at once started out. However, I will do my best amid opposition, to make them good citizens. The Connemara families are twenty-four in number. Around Graceville are four hundred other Catholic families, mostly Trish, and I beg the public, when Graceville is mentioned, to remember the latter rather than the former. There are not in Minnesota to-day settlers more thrifty, more sober, more self-reliant and intelligent, more prosperous, for the time they are in the country, than our Graceville colonists, and nowhere for its size is there a prettier and a livelier village than Graceville itself. The land of the colony is the best in the State, and with the advantage now offered to it by the completion of the Morris and Brown's Valley road — which runs right through it — this colony gives every promise of ranking first among all the country districts of the State for wealth, social comforts, and moral worth. In the atmosphere of Graceville the Connemara families will very soon be changed into excellent colonists. John Ibeland. St. Paul, December 21, 1880.